


Fear of Flying

by makokitten



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makokitten/pseuds/makokitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before he signs over his company, Tony makes Pepper an offer she has to refuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear of Flying

* * *

            “Hey, you busy?” 

            It’s a familiar call, one typically followed by, “I need to borrow you for a minute” whether Pepper is busy or not.  She usually is, but it never matters.  Tonight, she isn’t.  She’s just packing up when Tony calls her.  This time around, packing up has a sense of finality to it that weighs heavily on her shoulders, even though her heart swells the tiniest bit when she thinks about why that is.  She needs to leave this place clean and organized for whoever’s coming after her.

            “No,” she replies.

            “Good.  Come down to the lab.  I need to borrow you for a minute.”

            She smiles, puts away one last file, and wonders if her successor will come to know Tony this well.  It’s sort of a depressing thought, even though—as she reminds herself—she has no real claim on Tony, and that’s her prerogative.  Still, over a decade working for the same person… well, they’ve built up a rapport, she and him.  They’re about as close to a well-oiled machine as anything involving Tony Stark that isn’t an _actual_ machine can be.

            The transition is going to be rocky.  Not for her, for him.  It’ll take him a while to get used to someone who isn’t her, and at the breakneck pace he lives, Tony doesn’t have a while to spare.  She’s worried about him.  She’s always worried about him, but the difference is that now it’s not her job anymore.

            Well, almost.  Tomorrow. 

            She comes downstairs to find Tony tinkering with his Iron Man suit, using some tool she doesn’t recognize to replace a couple of bolts.  The lab is mostly dark—the only light comes from the monitors on his desk and the small floodlight he’s shining on the suit.  Clearly not an emergency.  He won’t need her to stick a hand in his chest again, thank God. 

            “Hey,” he says when he hears her.  He gestures vaguely with whatever he’s holding.  “Take a seat.”

            That’s a little weird.  Pepper complies anyway, finds an empty chair, and sits down.  “You wanted to see me?” 

            “Uh… yeah.”  He rolls his chair away from his suit, closer to her.  She’s expecting him to get right into whatever it is he wanted.  Instead, he says, “Big day tomorrow.”

            “Hah,” Pepper replies, allowing herself to smile a little.  “Well, not so big.  You just have to sign some papers and—”

            “And that’s it.  Company’s yours.  Officially.  I know.  _Still_.”  Tony reaches for a rag to wipe off his hands.  They both know she’s essentially been running Stark Industries for years.  “Think you’ll sleep at all tonight?”

            She shakes her head.  “Probably not.  What about you?”

            “Like a baby.  Company’s not in my hands anymore.  But before that…”  He puts the rag down, leaves his hands in his lap, and looks straight at her.  “I was thinking we could do something.”

            “Something.”  The word instantly has her on edge, for some reason.  “What kind of something?”  It takes a lot of willpower not to think of balconies and impractical dresses and almost-kisses, but she doesn’t—and Tony doesn’t either, probably.  And even if he were thinking about that, she’d say no.

            “I was _thinking_ —”  He draws it out, maybe because he thinks it’s an incredible idea, or maybe because he’s trying to wind her up.  If it’s the latter, it’s working.  “—we could go flying.”

            “Flying?” she repeats, a little incredulous.  Her entire body tenses at the idea.  “What, you mean, with you, in the _suit_ , carrying—”

            “Well, kind of.”

            “Tony.”  She hears it, and instantly, she’s six years old again—that’s the first time she can remember flying in a plane.  She wasn’t happy to leave the ground, but she was determined to be a grown up, so she let her parents strap her in and kept her back straight and tried to ignore her stomach dropping when the engines started to rumble.  But she was fearless, or she had to look it, so she let her fingers curl over the armrest and didn’t shake or cry at all.  She did what she had to.  And she lived.

            Pepper flies all of the time, now, but there’s always that one moment before takeoff when she’s that scared little girl again.  And it’s not limited to flying, either.  Most of the time she can skip right over it, the anxiety, and do what she needs to do.  Maybe that’s _why_ she can do so much—just to spite herself.  Over time, it’s just become a habit.  But sometimes she remembers takeoff, and she listens to her head when it says _no_.

            She doesn’t think that’s the sort of feeling she can explain to Tony, so she comes up with a reasonable objection: “It wouldn’t be _safe_.”

            “No, no, it’d be safe.  But it’s not what you think.  Listen.  Just listen.”  He rolls even closer to her.  He could take her hand if he wanted.  She doesn’t know if she wants him to.  “Look, I said things before about—about the company, about you being my successor.  You were there for that, right, this isn’t new.  But then I got to thinking—what if it wasn’t just the company?”

            Pepper frowns.  “I don’t understand.”

            Tony runs a hand through his hair.  “Well, let’s just pretend… something happens to me.”

            “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”  She doesn’t like this.

            “Well, let’s _say_ something happens.  I mean, with you being CEO, I’m free to be Iron Man full time, and… we both know that’s not the safest job in the world.  Let’s be honest, odds are slim anything’ll make a dent in this armor, but accidents happen, screws come loose, things like that.  I might find myself in a position where I can’t be Iron Man anymore.”  Tony pauses to take a breath.  “So, I was thinking, in that case, who gets the suit?”

            “All right…”

            “And, I mean, obviously it has to be someone I trust, right?  Of course, Rhodey’s an obvious choice.  You know, he’s a pilot, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, he’s trustworthy.  So, say I give him the suit.  He’s also in the Air Force, and he has morals or something, so he’s going to feel obligated to answer to his bosses.  So that means other guys are going to get the armor, too.  And I’m sure they’ll be good guys, for whatever definition of the word people use these days, but I won’t know them.”  He looks up.  “I do know you.”

            “I don’t—”  And then it dawns on her.  She glances over to where Tony had been sitting before.  “That suit you’re working on,” she says slowly.  “It’s too small for you.”

            “I don’t have your figure,” Tony says, and there’s a touch of excitement in his voice.  “Here, come on, take a look.  Jarvis, lights.”

            Pepper blinks as all of the lights in the lab turn on at once.  After her eyes adjust, she sees it.  The suit.  Hers?  It looks a lot like his.  The red’s a little darker, and it’s smaller, and not as flashy, but… she stands, and walks to it, drawn over as if by a magnetic field.  She places her hand to the chest.  It’s warm.  Tony _had_ been fixing it up when she came down, but he couldn’t have thrown it together in only a couple of hours.  How long has he been for planning this?

            “I’ve given you a couple of upgrades,” he says.  “The material’s lighter, and it should be a little faster.  Other than that, same functionality as mine.  So, what do you say?”  He’s looking up at her from his chair.  “Put it on, let’s go flying.”

            Pepper takes her eyes away from the suit to look down at Tony, and all she can think of is how much she’s not him.  And it’s not the obvious, the way she’s herself and he’s Tony, but it’s the little things, like the way he apologizes by buying her things she could never dream of affording (what could he have done to warrant giving her a _suit of armor_?) and the way he’s made a name for himself by being a genius and an utter moron all at once.  His idea of adventure is taking her out flying over Malibu; her idea of adventure is going to a new restaurant for lunch.  He’s spontaneity, she’s routine.  He’s damage, she’s control.

            She looks back at the suit and wonders if, deep down, she isn’t still that scared six-year-old girl after all, trying to keep it together.

            “I wasn’t built for this,” she says.

            “Well, no,” Tony replies.  “It was built for _you_.”

            Pepper puts her hand down.  Her heart is beating fast in her ears.  “I can’t.”

            “Sure you can.  I’m not going to say there isn’t a bit of a learning curve, but you’ll get the hang of it pretty quick.”

            “I’m not—qualified.”  She shakes her head.  “I’m not you.”

            “Of course you’re not me.”

            “No, I mean, you do the things that you do, this and… whatever else, and I do—what you don’t do.  That’s how it’s always been.”

            “No,” says Tony, crossing his arms.  “As I recall, you do the things that _need_ to be done.  This is something that needs doing, and you’re the person to—”  She shakes her head again, and he sees that she won’t be persuaded, and sighs.  “I guess we’re going to take a rain check on the flying?”

            She nods, relieved and weirdly hollow.  “I think that’s probably a good idea.”

            “Okay, I see how it is.”  He rolls away from the suit, and from her, but he’s not angry.  “Tell you what, though, I’ll keep it in storage for when you want it.”

            “If.”

            “ _When_.”

            Pepper smiles, just a little, even though she’s pretty sure there will never be a _when_.  “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”  Weird, knowing that’s probably the last time she’ll ever ask that.

            For a moment, Tony looks as though he’s going to say something else, but eventually he just says, “That will be all, Ms. Potts.”

            By the time she opens her mouth again, he feels half a world away.  She just says, “Goodnight, Tony,” and makes her way back up the stairs, a little dizzy.  There are a few more things to put away before she goes home, and leaves the handling of Tony Stark to someone else.


End file.
